


nothing

by sunflower_8



Series: saihara-hinata drabbles [5]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Arguing, Complicated Relationships, Implied/referenced illness, Literary References & Allusions, Mental Instability, Self-Esteem Issues, Unresolved Emotional Tension, idk - Freeform, things are kind of fucked up, vent - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:28:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24356587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflower_8/pseuds/sunflower_8
Summary: after a few moments, he gets a response from komaeda, frantic and a little bit flustered in the way that hinata had described. “ah, hello! i’m afraid i don’t recognize you, i’m terribly sorry, i-”hinata huffs a bit, smiling a bit more fondly at komaeda as he leans against a nearby street pole. “that’s saihara, nagito. friend of mine. i’ve mentioned him.”hm. saihara has never heard hinata refer to him as a friend before.(saihara finally sees how hinata and komaeda interact, and he's left with bittersweet fascination)
Relationships: Hinata Hajime & Saihara Shuichi, Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito, Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi
Series: saihara-hinata drabbles [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1759612
Comments: 18
Kudos: 139





	nothing

saihara hasn’t met komaeda before.

well, revision: he hasn’t met him before this specific moment.

scene is set: saihara is at a train station, preparing to visit his uncle. he approaches a bench to sit on and notices someone already sitting there. wispy white hair, ghostly pallor, hands resting in his lap, fingers twitching, face anxious. completely distracted, murmuring to himself. further inspection leads to the realization that there’s another person nearby, someone a lot more familiar. hinata is standing, pacing back and forth, face agitated. it doesn’t take very long, then, to realize who the white-haired male is. 

“hello,” saihara says cordially, a little bit nervous. he sits on the edge of the bench and waits for a response, watching carefully as komaeda looks up at him, looks at hinata, and then looks at him again. hinata stops pacing and offers a small smile, seeming exhausted but not exactly  _ upset  _ at saihara’s appearance.

after a few moments, he gets a response from komaeda, frantic and a little bit flustered in the way that hinata had described. “ah, hello! i’m afraid i don’t recognize you, i’m terribly sorry, i-”

hinata huffs a bit, smiling a bit more fondly at komaeda as he leans against a nearby street pole. “that’s saihara, nagito. friend of mine. i’ve mentioned him.”

saihara has never heard hinata refer to him as a friend before. 

komaeda’s expression flickers in recognition and another emotion that’s too fleeting to identify. it makes hinata’s smile go away, whatever it is. “ah, yes! i’m sorry, saihara-kun! i’m komaeda nagito, i’m not sure hinata has mentioned me-”

“he has,” saihara clarifies.

the same emotion crosses komaeda’s face. saihara thinks it may be a variation of hatred. “ah! okay. sorry, i’m um-” he waves his hand around, probably intending to give off a gist of his emotions, but saihara doesn’t get anything from it. he’s useless in that way. “-haha. sorry.”

“i thought we were working on that,” hinata gently scolds. “the apologizing thing.”

it’s definitely an expression akin to hatred. self hatred, maybe. “i’m trying,” komaeda says softly, almost like he wants their conversation to be private, which is understandable, really, but if it was going to escalate into a place that hinata has told him about before, he would think that the brunet would bluntly tell him to keep it in confidence. he would listen. of course he would. he understands how it can get. him and his boyfriend, too, they-

that’s not something to think about right now.

what he thinks about instead is how hinata sits down between saihara and komaeda, wrapping his arm loosely around komaeda’s waist and giving saihara a smile. and it’s kind of terrifying to see how  _ normal  _ he acts, how  _ relaxed  _ and  _ secure  _ he seems even if he appeared agitated only a few moments prior. saihara thinks it’s genuine and not an act, so he’s wondering if it really  _ was  _ annoyance on his face earlier, 

or if saihara has only ever seen the parts of hinata that are ugly, raw, yearning.

he doesn’t really want to think about that. it’s comforting to see hinata so at ease without the aid of intoxication, and it makes him smile a bit too. 

“so,” komaeda breaks the silence before giving a quick, nervous smile. “ah! sorry for talking without prompting, i-”

“nagito,” hinata says sternly.

komaeda takes a deep breath. “okay. um, i was just going to ask if you’re waiting for a train and where you’re going. if that’s okay to ask?”

it’s okay for saihara. but he notices that hinata’s ease on his face flickers away to something more similar to the expression he saw initially (so he was wrong, then). komaeda stiffens a bit, but he keeps smiling, eager for a response, to listen. 

saihara doesn’t know what the fuck is going on, but he gives them an answer anyway. “ah, i’m visiting my uncle and aunt. they’re planning to move closer to here, so i wanted to, um, help.” he hesitates before he asks, tentatively, “ah, if you’re fine with answering, where are you two going?”

komaeda doesn’t say anything, looking down at the concrete as he kicks his shoes against the ground. hinata gives saihara a  _ look,  _ and through it, saihara can see exhaustion, pain, and a kind of careworn love that leaves saihara feeling broken-hearted even if he’s not in their position. no matter how he looks at it, it’s bittersweet, and hinata’s voice is flat as he says, “we’re visiting a specialist doctor. nobody here knows shit about the thing we’re trying to… consider.” hinata sighs when he’s finished. saihara wants to say something to reassure him, but there’s really not a lot to say to that.

quietly, komaeda comments, “consider isn’t the correct word, i don’t think.”

“i’m not as particular with words as you are, nagito.” there’s an edge to his voice, a ridge against what is otherwise soothing, welcoming, able to run your fingertip along it without  _ stinging,  _ but the air is growing thicker and saihara thinks it would be easier if he was able to cut himself on the lilt in his voice. he doesn’t express that, because saihara isn’t particular with words either, and he has suspicion to believe that komaeda is less particular with words but more with the weight, damage control of something that’s already been discarded, broken glass in the bottom of the incorrect disposal bin but the landfills never gave a damn. 

and saihara feels the tension rising and he’s not very good at this. his boyfriend would be able to make the tension worse, enough so that it was  _ better,  _ or he’d crack a joke and make saihara laugh, or-- or, he would hold his hands and speak to him in a low voice, saying  _ it’s okay, they aren’t mad,  _ because right now saihara knows that hinata is  _ mad _ , komaeda is scared, and saihara is uncertain.

if he had to guess who is going to the hospital and why, he would say both of them and give a small shrug, because at the end of the day he knows that these are the two kinds of people he would see in a case file or in a poem and that’s exactly what a person shouldn’t be. 

it’s not like saihara can talk, though, about what people should and shouldn’t be. his body is an imprint in fiction as well.

“it’s cold,” hinata remarks idly. saihara can’t really feel it under his thick jacket and extra two layers, but he takes hinata’s word for it. hinata is wearing just a turtleneck. saihara is pretty sure komaeda is borrowing the jacket meant to go on top of that. 

and yet, bundled up, komaeda murmurs, “it is.”

“another day, then,” hinata says, and saihara really, really isn’t certain what that means, but he just nods along and clasps his hands in his lap, watching with a wary eye as komaeda rests his head against hinata’s shoulder.

“another day,” he echoes. 

hinata laughs breathily in response. “what’s that thing you always say?”

“i say a lot of things, hinata-kun.”

he huffs. “the thing you say involving tomorrow or something? from macbeth, right?”

“do you mean macbeth’s soliloquy after lady macbeth’s death?” he asks, “‘tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow?’”

“that’s the one,” hinata says with another laugh. he repeats in a quieter voice, “that’s the one.”

“i like macbeth,” saihara chimes in unprompted. he’s perfectly content watching the two of them interact (content is an incorrect word, it’s more like… fascination, like a historian watching the world fall apart and deny their past when they have all the information they need in their hands), but he wants to quell the tension. “are you well-read, komaeda-kun?”

“well-read is an understatement,” hinata grumbles, but komaeda’s eyes light up.

he nods eagerly, “i think so! do you read a lot of shakespeare, saihara-kun?”

“mm, not a lot.” he replies, “but an old friend of mine liked macbeth. i read it with them and i’ve reread it a couple times since. i don’t have it memorized, though. do you?”

“he has a lot of shakespeare plays memorized,” hinata says, cutting off the statement komaeda had yet to begin. “he also memorizes poetry and shit. emily dickinson and w.b. yeats. it’s a hobby. you can kill a lot of time reading, huh.” it might have been intended as a question, but it comes off as more of an acknowledgement, and komaeda’s hands shake a little. he nods, saying nothing else, and hinata keeps going, “i’ve heard him say an entire scene of romeo and juliet where they’re talking about birds or something-”

“the lark and the nightingale,” he quietly corrects.

hinata waves his hand with a grin komaeda doesn’t match. “yeah, that. he’s talked to me about lovecraft stories at, like, two am once. he really fucking likes macbeth, the characters banquo-”

“hinata-kun.”

“-and also lady macbeth,” he ignores the other. saihara’s beginning to see a rise of adrenaline, emotion,  _ craze and hysteria, _ in hinata’s eyes, while komaeda seems entirely empty aside from a slowburn emotion that he detects as resentment. saihara feels anxious and he wants to comment on it, but hinata doesn’t stop talking. “he also like hamlet, too. and king lear. and he talks about shakespeare’s mistress a lot, though i have no idea who that bitch is except that he wrote, like, twenty seven different sonnets about him-”

“twenty eight.”

“-yeah, sure. i used to be into that shit, but i gave it up for some other things in life. anyway, nagito’s really into reading. it’s kind of endearing.”

“if endearing means useless, certainly.” there’s a coolness in his voice, more biting than the wind.

hinata sighs, energy dissipated, “it’s not useless, nagito-”

“reading books doesn’t make us any less-”

“okay, we are  _ not _ having this discussion right now.” hinata states harshly, and komaeda immediately silences himself, adjusting himself so that the arm around his waist seems a bit more constricting and his head is away from hinata’s shoulder. the brunet shakes his head, swearing under his breath, before he looks at saihara. “sorry about that, saihara.”

“no need to apologize,” he quickly says. “i understand.”

hinata narrows his eyes, “is that so?”

“yes.”

“hm,” is all he responds with. 

saihara has a strange want to hug the two of them, to send there somewhere where they don’t have to worry and they can just  _ feel  _ instead of constantly thinking about the things that saihara knows plagues them both. he wants to protect them, because even if they’re fucked up and not the nicest people out there, they’re still  _ good  _ but saihara knows that neither of them would believe it for a second. it’s odd, really, this feeling of  _ knowing  _ them, as if all their secrets and thoughts have been laid bare to saihara in the fifteen minutes they have spent here, and yet he knows nothing,  _ nothing,  _ about either of them. it’s strange.

“when does the train come?” hinata asks.

“ten minutes,” his boyfriend replies. 

“cool.” he shivers a bit. “it’s cold as fuck out here.”

“i should give you your jacket back-”

“it’s okay, love.”

saihara feels like these are the things they argue about most often. he also feels like a spectator, out of his body and useless, but they don’t have to reassure him. not in the light of this. it really is interesting, if he can set aside his sadness and observe. 

“hinata-kun, you’re cold.”

“yeah, and?”

“it’s my fault we’re here, hinata-kun.”

“ _ hajime,  _ nagito, and you’re anemic  _ and _ cold, so i think i should prioritize you. and this isn’t your fault, for fuck’s sake.”

“when have i  _ ever _ been a priority?”

“we aren’t having this argument here.”

“it’s not an argument. i’m stating a fact. i’m not important.”

“ _ goddammit _ , nagito, we aren’t doing this shit here!”

“fine. i’m terribly sorry.”

“me too. whatever.” 

…

there’s a beat. saihara wants to say something, but he just waits, clinging to the sight of hinata happy because maybe they aren’t  _ friends  _ but saihara just wants to see him happy for once. komaeda, too, even if he doesn’t know him-- doesn’t know either of them, really. they both deserve something better.

he coughs a bit, earning hinata and komaeda’s attention, and he says in an awkward, stuttered voice. “ah, you know… if you two, um, ever need anything… you can let me know. just. in general.”

hinata smirks, but there’s no mirth in it. “we’re not going to pose a burden on your life, saihara.”

“it wouldn’t be a burden. i just, ah, care about the two of you. as people. and i really am not that busy, so if you need anything, i can always-”

“thank you, saihara-kun,” komaeda interrupts, giving a soft smile. it’s genuine but not  _ happy,  _ and it’s impossible to miss the glance he gets from his partner. a look that’s almost concerned. almost. komaeda meets hinata’s eyes, shakes his head slightly, and looks back at saihara. “you’re truly kind.”

“yeah.” hinata agrees. “thanks, saihara. i’ll hang out with you when we get back in town, yeah?”

“of course.” it almost feels like a plea.

komaeda pries away hinata’s grip from his waist. it’s methodical, careful, subtle, and yet nobody on the bench misses the way that hinata holds tighter, shooting him a look that could range anywhere from  _ don’t do this in public  _ to  _ are you okay  _ to  _ i’m sorry.  _ komaeda just giggles, and it sounds solemn and melancholic enough for conversation to die down. 

saihara checks his phone. a couple texts from his boyfriend. he should probably get up and call him, excuse himself from the strange situation he’s in, but he finds himself lingering when he hears komaeda say, softly,

“it will be rain tonight.”

a quote from macbeth. quiet. 

and another, “let it come down.”

“i checked the forecasts.”

“...”

“oh. my bad. keep reciting shakespeare, then. whatever makes you happy.”

“it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.”

“i really wish you didn’t do this for hours, love. i wish you’d talk to me instead.”

“… signifying nothing.”

the soliloquy finished. there’s nothing to say to that.

he will have to call kokichi later. for now, saihara listens to the sound of the street and the approaching train, hinata and komaeda silent dispute and the former’s resentful concern at the other’s pain, still somehow quiet aside from the shaking noise of his tearful recitation, a finality in the way he repeats, _ “signifying nothing.” _

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> so i'm planning on making this into a series with all my saihara-hinata fics. they aren't exactly in the same timeline because i have a tendency to cause major plot holes (especially since all of them are vents lmao) but i think there are some common threads n stuff. i already have a saihara-komaeda fic planned so. may as well.
> 
> anyway, uh, sorry for this. writing relationships like the one komahina has here is really cathartic to me for probably psychological reasons i definitely shouldn't analyze. they do get better and more compatible, though. hinata and komaeda need to work on themselves first, but then things will be better, i'd like to imagine.
> 
> the saihara-hinata duo is surprisingly good for venting. as is komaeda/hinata. i'm really into it. as into it as i can be, considering i write them when i'm really depressed lol. i mean i'm doing kind of okay as i post this but.
> 
> vibing
> 
> that's it. sorry for the weird posting time too idk i really hope ppl don't hate this. haha. they might. idk.


End file.
